Snow Angels (2007/I)

User Rating:

7.2/10   

Director:

David Gordon Green

Writers (WGA):

David Gordon Green (screenplay)
Stewart O'Nan (novel)

Release Date:

11 September 2008 (Greece)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Tagline:

Some will fall. Some will fly.

Plot:

A drama that interweaves the life of a teenager, with his old baby sitter, her estranged husband, and their daughter.

Plot Keywords:

School | Flashback | Small Town | Snow | Restaurant

Awards:

3 nominations

Cast

Kate Beckinsale	...	Annie Marchand
Sam Rockwell	...	Glenn Marchand
Michael Angarano	...	Arthur Parkinson
Jeanetta Arnette	...	Louise Parkinson (as Jeannetta Arnette)
Griffin Dunne	...	Don
Nicky Katt	...	Nate Petite
Tom Noonan	...	Band Leader
Connor Paolo	...	Warren Hardesky
Amy Sedaris	...	Barb Petite
Olivia Thirlby	...	Lila Raybern
Gracie Hudson	...	Tara
Brian Downey	...	Frank Marchand
Carroll Godsman	...	Olive
Daniel Lillford	...	Rafe
Deborah Allen	...	May Van Dorn

MPAA:

Rated R for language, some violent content, brief sexuality and drug use.

Runtime:

107 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

SDDS | Dolby Digital | DTS

Certification:

USA:R | Singapore:NC-16 | Netherlands:12 | Australia:MA | Norway:15

Filming Locations:

Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada

Company:

Crossroads Films

Trivia:

David Gordon Green, who would end up directing the film, first worked on the script for another director. After 3 years, this other director moved on to other projects and Green was approached by the producers to make the film.

Goofs:

Continuity: In the scene where Arthur takes a swig from a bottle of beer hidden on the floor, he raises it with the label facing him. In the next cut scene, as he lowers the bottle, the label can be clearly seen facing the camera.

Quotes:

Louise Parkinson: Arthur, I'm gonna ask you a favour to not bottle this up inside, okay? It's easy for us to block out the things that upset us, that's what I do. That's what most people do. But it's important that you feel through this, it's so important I can't tell you.

Movie Connections:

References Top Gun (1986)

Soundtrack:

New Orleans Slaughterhouse

A masterpiece, much deeper than it is being given credit for

Snow Angels is a film that one release, has been relatively accepted as a competent, straight forward depressing drama. I believe, however, that the themes of this film reach far deeper than that of a typical depressing drama.

Originally, I had read an interpretation of the film praising the contrast between Arthur and Lily's relationship, representing perfect bliss and happiness and hope, and Glen and Annie's relationship of blackness and destruction. However after looking deeper into the film, I believe Snow Angel uses not two relationships to portray its themes, not three, but four: Arthur and Lily, Barb and Nate, Don and Louise Parkinson (Arthur's parents), and finally, Glen and Annie. What's brilliant about this movie is how each one represents a step in the process of a relationship from perfect beginning to total black ending, and how each step bleeds into the next chronologically, going from perfection, to the shattering of this perfection, to the fall in its course, to destruction and death.

Arthur and Lily are the first step, through them we see a relationship's beginning, or really, its birth. We see the first meeting and eyeing, their courting, their first kiss, their first sex... the relationship is born and blossoms and we leave them in perfect happiness. Arthur and Lily are in fact, perfect beings, completely untainted and incapable of wrong.

The line then jumps to Barb and Nate. They represent, simply, the incident that causes the rift or breakup in the couple, the shattering of perfection, the beginning of the fall. While the jump in terms of age and status is big from Arthur and Lily to Barb and Nate, in this case age doesn't matter... the symbolism of going from happiness and stability, to getting hit with the "rift moment", is the same. Barb and Nate get the least screen time and development in this film but their place is essential to this progressive arc.

Continuing where they left off, Don and Louise Parkinson, Arthur's parents, show the results of the incident and separation. They're formally separated, as opposed to Nate being just kicked out of the house. Another difference is that Nate in the film is still a half goofy character (leopard underwear was there for a reason), and is very calm when confronting Glen. Meanwhile Don is seemingly more sombre, he has an air of creepy offness, not yet developed. Don and Louise are obviously on the edge, but with Don's mixtape at the end, we leave them in a moment of most importantly, hope, a dominant theme in the film... Their fate is still ambiguous, they can turn this thing around. Or they can't...

The last step is obviously Glen and Annie, who show what happens when you don't turn it around, when you lose all hope hit total destruction and blackness. They of course, end up falling deeper and deeper into darkness until absolute tragedy, and death.

What's even more brilliant about this is that it ties overall into the basic from comedy to tragedy meter. The basic classification of all stories, is you begin at the top, with comedies, where you have a happy ending and innocent, perfect beings, but as you go further and further down the drop, almost like a fall into a hole, you get more flawed, complex beings who do more and more morally wrong things, until of course you hit the bottom, complete tragedy, and destruction of the human soul completely. These stages are, in essence, symbolized and brought out in Snow Angels. You could also tie the film into our loss of innocence from childhood into less and less joy and more and more frailty as adults, until we finally reach death. I'm no Catholocism expert but I'm guessing you could tie that in there somewhere too... the heaven and hell thing or whatever, or just birth - life - death.

Oh, and has it been mentioned this movie is amazingly acted, shot, and edited? I'd heard the Beckinsale can actually act chatter, but ho.ly. cow... she jumped from Scarlett Johannson level to give her an Oscar level in like one film. Rockwell matches her, just brilliant. With the heavy melodrama these two are asked to pull off, it'd be VERY easy for most actors to slip into overacted and falsehood, but they pull it off immensely. Angarano, Thirlby, stars of the future. Arnette, Dunne, Katt, Sedaris, all great.

Do not miss this film, it's one of the finest of the year

Review written for worldofkj.com/forum